Hard at Work on the Kafunta Pontoon

It’s that time of the year when we are hard at work assembling our pontoon to cross the Luangwa River giving our guests a shortcut into South Luangwa National Park. This project require a lot of planning and even more manpower. Jospehat Msoni, one of our safari guides, is in charge of this driven local team, ensuring that the pontoon will be up and running soon. Make sure you visit Kafunta to experience this exciting way to start off your safari!

Meet Our Newest Team Member: Leandi Pretorius

Leandi Pretorius has just joined our dynamic team. Leandi is from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. She obtained her diploma in hospitality in Cape Town and, shortly after discovering her love for mother nature, returned to her roots and started working as a lodge manager at a 5 star reserve in the Eastern Cape. Leandi loves working in the bush and sharing beautiful African experiences with guests.

Built for Comfort: New Shade Roofs for the Vehicles

We are very excited about the newest addition to our safari cruisers – our very own shade roofs. Now all Kafunta guests can enjoy prime game viewing with less exposure from the sun and more exposure for their cameras!

The deck is also ideally situated for general game and bird viewing and will be available for any of our guests to use at their request. We are excited about the potential photo opportunities that the tree deck will provide and, along with our bird hide, feel confident that our guests will be able to have some fantastic, diverse “Polaroid moments” right here in camp!

The ever elusive Wild Dogs were spotted fairly regularly, much to the delight for all at Kafunta… Providing some incredible sightings and photo opportunities. The Wild Dog pack also seems to be growing with quite a few cubs around, which is always great to see.

And of course, lets not forget the Leopard, the animal that the South Luangwa is famous for! We had so many spectacular sightings with these gorgeous animals – Including 1 day where a leopard ran off with one of our guests camera covers!!

All in all, a typical month at Kafunta…

We had a great football season in the valley this year, and are delighted to be the champions again. To celebrate the win, the Super Strikers were fetched by Andrew, a Kafunta guide, and then went on to do some “victory laps” around the village with their Champions Cup, before heading into the South Luangwa National Park for a fantastic game drive and picnic.

Needless to say, training for next year is already getting under way and we are looking forward to next years tournament.

 Coming for breakfast before game drive proved to be a little challenging for guests staying in chalets 1 to 6. The elephants had completely taken over that side of the camp, and for sure, they definitely had the right of way!! Luckily they moved over to the kitchen area so breakfast could start and game drive wasn’t too delayed…

When everyone came back from morning game drive the guides, Josephat and Abel, had great fun leading them along the front of the chalets by the river, over decks and around bushes to get everyone back to their chalets, because once again, the elephants had claimed the walkways!!!

 The Island Bush Camp, not to be outdone, also had their share of hippo sightings…. The camp woke up one morning and whilst they had breakfast, they sat and watched crocodiles eating a dead hippo for their breakfast!!

All in all, just another spectacular day at Kafunta…

If you want to be woken up several times during the night by the sound of roaring lions then Kafunta is the place to be as one young male lion and his two lionesses have been in the area for months. For many evenings now we have been listening to the lions roaring while enjoying dinner on the deck after an exciting day on safari.

Our three, what have come to be known as ‘resident’ lions have left the park since the rainy season with the rising levels of the river and since food over this side is abundant, there has been no need for them to get their coats wet and swim back across the river. They seem to be surviving well on impala and puku, giving up their favoured treat of buffalo and are looking in good condition.

Hopefully, in light of the recent ‘love in the air’ and having seen two of them mating over the past week, in 110 days or so we may be blessed with a few cubs!

What a great day for the teams of the Mfuwe Youth Soccer Academy! Being visited by three members of Chipolopolo
doesn’t happen every day for these local teams which certainly made the most of their brush with soccer fame. Kalililo Kakonje, Davies Phiri and Honor Janza from the Zambian National Soccer Team meet our Mfuwe Youth Soccer Academy. The young teams gathered en masse to pay homage to some of their soccer heroes who were interested to meet the Youth League.

Mfuwe Youth Soccer Academy started with Luke Cowan playing soccer at Kafunta and a few young boys who would come to the lodge every Saturday and join him in a ‘match’. The band of keen young soccer players grew enough for several teams to eventually be formed and for the Academy to be born. Inspired by the teams’ story and to help the boys along the stars kindly brought the boys miniature signed soccer balls, whether the boys can bring themselves to kick the balls around in fear of rubbing off the signatures is another question. We are  so proud to have helped give these great opportunities to the youth of Mfuwe, thank you again to the Chipolopolo guys for supporting our local rising stars and encouraging them to reach for new heights, it was a day that the players will not forget easily!

As always the wild dogs are in the area during the early season, we have seem them in big numbers during the bush camp building and the other days the staff vehicle came across them on the way to work! Some of our lucky guest also saw them on the Safari.

The camp has been home to three lions as they have been seen in and around the camp for the last weeks, some guest had a visit right in front of the the chalets. Unfortunately this was at the cost for the puku’s in front of the Lodge as they have now reduced in numbers, last night was the latest casualty!
This has been a great start to the season and we keep you posted on the coming sightings.

We started supporting Greenpop with their project Trees for Zambia. By buying trees and planting them we can support to minimise the impact and contribute to move towards reducing deforestation.

For more information read on our website.